Ben Malgeri

Yeah.

Ben Malgeri.

Ooh, um, I, I'm gonna go single.

I think he just, he's coming off a lot of positive momentum, right? Um, he's, he's kind of part of this next wave even though he's not as young as some of the other prospects.

The numbers don't like him so far.

Malgeri can do some pretty, pretty good things, for sure.

How much is he gonna actually play next year? That's a little bit TBD.

I think Bryce Rainers a ways away still, although with a good year he could start knocking on the door loudly by the end of next season.

And unfortunately, I think it's your boy that's been in the right field who, um, Unfortunately, he had the resistance ban accident, Perez.

I just, you know, with Kerry and Callahan and Malgeri, especially I think Malgeri being right-handed, and he did have some decent pop, too.

Good defense out there.

I just think he's a better profile than Perez, and I know he's a switch hitter, and AJ loves that.

And to your point, if Tork was struggling and Dingler was struggling and you're wrestling those guys alternatively, they were lucky to have two right-handed bats in the lineup on some days.

Like, it was that crazy.

So I think that's a priority, especially with more lefty pitchers coming into the game, that Perez gets the ax altogether and they keep Malgeria in that spot.

Yeah, that's definitely somebody that we've kind of talked about that's been around for a little bit.

And we talked about that on this show, right? Like, they got way more aggressive in September for a few reasons.

One is personnel, right? They get Malgeri, they get Clark, they get guys that are a little bit faster and have the ability to steal.

Um, but I also think, especially once they were eliminated from postseason contention, it was just like, "Let's get a little bit more aggressive and see what happens." It's also important to note that it's not all Sanders' fault that they couldn't steal bases.

Like, a lot of that, I w- I would say o- a vast majority if not, like, very close to all of that has to do with the personnel on the roster just not being capable of stealing bases.

Max Clark is really good.

You love your young players like Malgeri, and Karp can hit 30 homers, man.

I think he's got to come back.

Oh, that looks a lot like the same outfield.

We'll see how other teams reconfigure their roster this winter.

But in the context of the 2026 season, I just don't want to hear a lot of like, well, Ben Malgeri had a nice September.

He did.

That's good.

That's great.

Ben Malgeri probably shouldn't have been playing this much in September to begin with, had things gone differently.

Yeah, and once the season is officially over, we'll do a lot of those reflective stuff and give out grades and kind of figure out how we got here and then figure out what the moves are to be made moving forward.

So that's definitely coming down the pipe.